


In a straight line

by faceofstone



Category: Monument Valley (Video Game)
Genre: Drabble Sequence, Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-19
Updated: 2015-12-19
Packaged: 2018-05-07 18:04:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5465858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faceofstone/pseuds/faceofstone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Princess, are we going home?”<br/>“We are going back.”<br/>Toward distant grasslands, dotted in white.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In a straight line

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Petronia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Petronia/gifts).



Convex and Concave

 

“Princess, will it rot now with dust and ghosts?”, one crow asks.

“Will it rest?”, another caws.

 

In the distance, beyond the rose-tinted rooks and creeks and cliffs and broken paths, the entrance to the valley of monuments lies protected by a tall slab of stone, a monolith reaching higher that the crows' wings will ever carry them.

The princess clicks her beak and cocks her head to the side until the paths realign and vanish into a single point beyond the stone.

 

“Sacred geometry rests in the world's bones”, Ida answers and, in a single step, walks out of the valley before taking flight again. “We have returned. We now return.” Her people follow.

 

 

 

Still Life

 

“Princess, is this our home?”, one crow asks.

“Like the valley was ours”, Ida answers.

 

A harsh wind flows through the canal, carrying ice that picks at the crows' wings and they are tired, so tired already, are they flying in circles, squinting, unable to see the way out. Do mountains end?

Down at the bottom of the rocky walls, lines of colored flags flap and stretch out in welcome as dark stone roofs rest underneath. There are lights, or there is brilliant snow. Hard to say.

Three crows want to believe in this home. They circle down until the hailstorm hides them from view. The rest of them close their ranks and keep going.

 

“Now, yes. Like the valley was ours”, Ida repeats.

 

 

 

House of Stairs

 

“Princess, what lies at the end?”, one crow asks.

 

Today they rest, under a mountain's stern protection. Perched on a flight of stairs carved in the mountainside, they see its steps unfold, climbing up and up. It did not seem so daunting from far away, yet the closer they came, the more they saw, stairs revealing stairs, and hours of climbing have led all explorers no ten steps higher than the rest of their people nested underneath.

A daring fledgling stretches her wings and circles the mountain counter-clockwise, opposite the path. She looks far away from the steps whenever her spiraling flight passes them by, believing in her feathers and in her goal. She makes it to the mountaintop. “Nothing awaits”, she tells the others, dejected, as she makes her way back down.

 

“That is not the question and that is not the point”, Ida eventually answers, though by then, her people already know.

 

 

 

Study for Stars  
  


“Princess, what is sacred?”, one crow asks.

 

Under the fresh blue of evening, the mountains to their right are steep, eroded by quick waters roaring below. This row of frayed stone pillars holds a sphere, smooth and dark and molded from the rock itself.

She remembers this landmark from her outbound journey, but it was no bigger than an egg. The humming she heard is now barely a low, restrained vibration, hidden deep within.

They stop for the night. The sphere is warm.

 

“That is”, Ida answers.

 

 

 

Gravitation

 

“Princess, is anything fixed?”, one crow asks.

 

Deep in the night, the mountains eventually slope into a dry, flat expanse. There, the sky plunges into a lake, whose star-filled waters collect and rush again into a distant abyss. The crows cannot find their shadows anymore.

Fixed is a hefty promise to keep. Rocks? But she has seen them change and realign. Is anything fixed, indeed?

 

“Turtles for sure”, Ida answers.

 

 

 

Symmetry Drawing

 

“Princess, what have they forgotten?”, one crow whispers.

 

There is a forest, bursting with pale fresh leaves, and in the forest there is a clearing, where the sharp rays of sunshine turn the warm greens into yellows. In the clearing, a flock of pigeons waste the afternoon away. The crows make sure not to bother them, lest this pigeon-state is a curse and they might get stuck again.

 

“Their secrets are well-kept; their princess, far away”, Ida remembers. She picks up a feather from the ground and blows it away, letting the sunlight paint a rainbow over its dull gray.

 

 

 

Magic Mirror

 

“Princess, what have _we_ forgotten?”, one crow asks.

 

The crows walk in single file through the halls of the manor that lies at the end of the forest. Its corridors unfurl into strange red rooms where fire is lit, past windows filled with leaves, a path that crosses a trail of crumbles, echoes of footsteps and a warm pillow, but keeps them far from the heart of that place.

Cawing and flapping their winds, they come to an unruly halt in front of the mirror that runs along the ballroom's wall. What will their image show, they whisper. What truth awaits this time.

When their princess leads them forward, the mirror shows nothing more and nothing less than a confused column of colored crows.

 

“The rolling of thunder, beetroot, one shiny button and a shell”, Ida answers. Nothing major, it would seem, not anymore.

 

 

 

Circle Limit

 

“Princess, is this home?”, one crow asks.

 

They descend, from a hatch in the manor's garden, walking past rocks they have no name for, but that others took the care to etch, inscribe and love. The pictures on the wall spell out warnings and tales and when the crows are very still, they can hear laughter echo from underneath. These tunnels are a home. Just not theirs.

 

“We have wings”, Ida shrugs in reply.

 

 

 

Belvedere

 

“Why does sand shine?”, one crow asks.

 

The tunnels end in sand. A cold, gray beach stretches out in front of them, preparing them for thoughts of the sea beyond. To their left, a single tower rises over the flat landscape, its two stories dwarfing the nearby rocks and bushes.

“It shows home”, Ida explains, remembering her first journey through these lands, the night spent in the tower and the comfort she had found in the spyglass housed therein. Her people cheer: they all want to see home.

“It shows nothing”, a crow says, his eye now circled by black soot.

“It is broken”, another one confirms.

Ida blinks and checks for herself. When she points the spyglass toward the tower's window, she is greeted by a terse, green starry sky, an observatory carved in stone, and a yellow spot that, she is sure, is staring back from afar.

 

“Because it remembers”, Ida answers.

 

 

 

A Fluorescent Sea

 

“Princess, what regulates reflections?”, one crow asks.

 

For days they fly low on the lucid sea. A school of fish joins their path from below. Through the glittering waters, the crows learn of the crowned fish-princess with scales of blinding white, her lonesome quest, her forgotten people.

(When they fly at night, they dream of gills.)

A crow caws a goodbye and dives; in the same breath, a fish rises up to join the sky.

 

“Light, surface, angle, and the mystery lying underneath”, Ida answers.

 

 

 

Relativity Lattice

 

“Princess, we are small and tired. How did we cross this sea?”, one crow asks.

 

Past the setting sun captured within a half-sunk lamp, at land's end, on a distant shore, a ray of blue signals their arrival. The crows rest.

 

“The crashing of waves is also sacred”, Ida answers.

 

 

 

Bond of Union

 

“Can friendship rewrite maps and trace a swift straight line?”, Ida asks, turning for one moment her back on her people. She has traversed the world to bring them back to this patch of grass which she calls home, whatever that means, to the place her journey began, which is rich in soil and devoid of ghosts.

Still, Ida wishes they could have stayed, that she could have stayed, that they could have taken a slower route over land. There weren't only ruins and ghosts, in the valley. She gave back and found and lost.

“If by a sacred geometry of thoughts you can hear this: I miss you, and you are my friend.”

 

Upon the hill, in a field of white flowers, a mound of soil gets tossed aside.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> :) Totem!  
> Thank you for your charming letter, dear recipient. I was half hoping to match on it and be spurred to create something new and substantial in that universe (something that could attempt to take the game's spirit and make it fit for words).   
> Btw, all drabble titles are M. C. Escher's paintings. Sometimes the painting itself served as inspiration as well.


End file.
